People Before Profit blog

No mataris

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:27:00 +0000

La declaración criminal y peligrosa hecha por el líder “cristiano” de extrema derecha Pat Robertson en su programa de televisión “The 700 Club” el 22 de agosto, donde llamó por el asesinato del presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez por agentes estadounidenses debe ser condenado inmediatamente por la Casa Blanca y el Congreso.

El secretario de Defensa Donald Rumsfeld dijo que esto simplemente son las palabras de un “ciudadano privado”. Pero ¿quien es este “ciudadano privado”? Él es fundador de la Coalición Cristiana. Él controla un vasto imperio informativo “cristiano”. Él es una fuerza principal en el Partido Republicano y tiene relaciones muy estrechas con la administración Bush. De hecho, Robertson ayudó elegir a Bush, movilizando grande secciones de la comunidad cristiana evangélica para que vote por Bush. Quizás esto explica porqué el presidente parece muy tímido para realmente condenar a Robertson.

Bob Edgar, líder del Concilio Nacional de Iglesias, que cuenta con 45 millones, dijo que el llamado de Robertson en favor del asesinato es “horrorizante”. Edgar condenó al televangelista por ignorar “miles de años de ley judeocristiana, incluyendo el mandamiento de que No Mataréis”.

Parece que Robertson pensó que encontró una escapatoria en los Diez Mandamientos.

Robertson hizo su declaración pronto después de que Rumsfeld regresó de un viaje a Sudamérica. Rumsfeld presionó a los gobiernos de la región a que rechacen las aspiraciones democráticas hacia la izquierda de los pueblos y aislar a Venezuela (junto con Cuba). La declaración de Robertson puede ser para ver como reacciona el público norteamericano a la idea de una nueva intervención o asesinato estadounidense en la región.

El llamado de Robertson fue por el terrorismo — el asesinato de un Jefe de Estado elegido democráticamente. Este llamado es aun peor cuando esta administración actualmente está protegiendo al admitido terrorista Luis Posada Carriles que Venezuela quiere extraditar para juzgar por el atentado contra un avión de pasajeros cubano donde mataron a 76 personas.

La Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones debe ser forzada a investigar a Robertson y su “700 Club”. Actos criminales — como esta amenaza de muerte — no debe hacerse en las ondas públicas.

Christmas in August for big energy

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:32:00 +0000

“Every industry gets their own little program. There’s pork in there for everybody.”

— Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, quoted in the July 29 Washington Post.

“It’s Christmas in August for big energy, and consumers get lumps of coal,” was how Anna Aurilio of environmental and consumer advocacy group US PIRG described the new Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed by President Bush on Aug. 8. And despite a few ornaments attached to the Christmas tree as sops to the environment, the big presents under the tree had the energy industry’s name on them.

Most media attention since the bill’s passage has focused on the $14.5 billion in tax breaks and billions more in corporate subsidies and loan guarantees, a cost that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) described as “staggering.” But largely escaping scrutiny was the new law’s far-reaching Electricity Title, which repeals the New Deal-era Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) and shifts much state jurisdiction over energy matters to the pro-industry Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Much of the tax breaks represent subsidies to promote domestic oil and natural gas drilling, despite the fact that North American reserves are in serious decline and hold no real promise of bringing down consumer prices or reducing dependence on imports in the long run. Other subsidies would enhance corporate profits on natural gas and electric transmission lines, encourage the construction of new nuclear power reactors and expand certain renewable energy sources such as wind turbines.

Although the bill was touted as a bipartisan compromise (besides solid Republican support, it received the votes of a majority of Senate Democrats), the only significant consumer “victories” were the elimination of a provision giving lawsuit immunity to manufacturers of gasoline additive MTBE, which has contaminated drinking water in many states, and postponing the fight over opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Republicans in the House have promised to bring that up again in a budget bill next month.

Less-publicized provisions of the bill accelerate depreciation on investment in power transmission (in simple terms, this boon to investors speeds up payback and reduces their risk) and give FERC the power to both authorize higher profits for transmission to utilities and require state regulatory commissions to pass the costs on to consumers. In the name of enhancing reliability and avoiding a repeat of the 2003 East Coast blackout, FERC is given additional tools to promote deregulation, despite the contention of unions and some engineers in the industry that deregulation was itself a major cause of the blackout.

The AFL-CIO had made preservation of PUHCA its main priority for the energy bill. The 1935 law, passed by Congress in the face of massive opposition by the electric utility industry, restricted utility holding companies and mergers. The law was passed after the collapse of the Insull Cartel, the Enron of its day, which left many local utilities in shambles and consumers and small investors holding the bag for billions of dollars.

A Federal Trade Commission report to Congress at the time described manipulative practices permitting maximum control of operating facilities with minimum investment; arbitrary or imaginative overstating of accounts to encourage the sale of value-inflated securities; creation of fictitious profits by means of phony inter-company transactions and other similar devices; use of deceptive methods of accounting; manipulation of security markets; and other abuses. Sound familiar?

The FTC report concluded that “fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, dishonesty, breach of trust, and oppression are the only suitable terms to apply … [to] many practices which have taken sums beyond calculation from the rate paying and investing public.” PUHCA addressed many of these issues, and had the law been vigorously enforced, the Enron scandal might have been averted.

But even though inadequately enforced for many years, PUHCA has nevertheless been a barrier to mergers that serve no other purpose than to inflate utility stock prices, reduce employment and degrade service, and evade effective state regulation over rates and service quality.

Its repeal has been a top goal of the utility corporations, and both consumer groups and financial analysts are predicting a wave of mergers and consolidation in the industry. Says attorney Lynn Hargis, former staffer for FERC and now a volunteer with the consumer group Public Citizen: “Once PUHCA is gone, there will be a white-hot fury of buying and selling utilities and utility assets — it will be a revival of the 1920s, when three huge companies owned half of all utilities.” (Quoted in Energy Bulletin, June 23, 2005.)

The Energy Policy Act embodies Bush’s production-oriented, corporate-friendly energy policy. Absolutely nothing in that policy addresses any real problems, unless you consider inadequate corporate profits or a clean environment to be problems!

In an upcoming article, I’ll try to outline the elements of a people’s energy program. Stay tuned.

Chuck Williams is a California trade unionist with long involvement in energy issues.

Power struggle in Connecticut

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:46:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The New Haven Board of Aldermen held a fiery hearing on July 25 regarding a proposal for a special hospital zone which will include a $430 million Cancer Center at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Residents testified that they oppose the zone because it would enable the hospital to expand without community input. “CORD is in favor of the cancer center,” said Tawana Galbraith, a Community Organized for Responsible Development vice-chair, “but the residents must be a part of the negotiating process. We must have a seat at the table.”

Yale New Haven Hospital is in the heart of the Hill neighborhood, which is largely African American and Latino. While the hospital states, “we make great neighbors,” Galbraith challenged the proposal for a large new parking garage. “Our neighborhood is a residential area. Would you want smog and traffic problems in your neighborhood?” she asked.

Tawana Marks, who works at the hospital, suggested the hospital provide free bus passes instead of building a garage. Using one of the hospital parking lots costs her $55 a month. “That’s 2 percent of my salary,” she said.

“The fumes from the garage might cause more health problems,” said Verelda Wilson, who spoke as part of a seven-person delegation of tenants of Trade Union Plaza, which faces the site of the proposed garage. Wilson said that New Haven has the highest asthma hospitalization rate in Connecticut.

“We are not against the Cancer Center,” she explained. “But we oppose the zone. Traffic is bad enough now,” she said, describing how seniors have a hard time crossing the streets and school buses have problems picking up children.

Cortez Stewart, a member of Unite Here Local 34 at Yale who lives a few blocks from the hospital, asked, “How would you like to smell fumes in your neighborhoods? The hospital has no respect for us.”

Al Marder, representing the New Haven People’s Center, led a large delegation to the microphone. “The People’s Center and the hospital have been neighbors since 1937,” he said. “The hospital has chosen a path of confrontation and a policy to divide the community when it would be much easier, certainly much wiser, to respect the feelings of their neighbors and benefit from their suggestions.”

The Rev. Abraham Hernandez from the Hill spoke against a special zoning permit for the hospital because “this would allow them to expand and take ownership in our city.”

National Clips

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:42:00 +0000

National Clips

CHICAGO: Residents campaign for winter heating

Coming off a victory that brought $10 million in Summer Cooling funds for those affected by Chicago’s intense heat wave, the Affordable Power to the People Campaign and the Coalition of 100 are planning a campaign for the winter heating season opening Sept. 1 to prevent gas cutoffs before the weather turns cold.

“We’re sick of showing freezing families huddled by dangerous space heaters,” said Maria Majic, APTP co-chair. “The group picketed the mayor’s office and the governor’s office Aug. 22 so no families will go through winter with no heat. Last year, 13,000 households went through winter shut off. Our goal is to get everyone turned on by Oct. 15.”

WASHINGTON: Station fires host for anti-Islam tirade

In July, Chris Berry, president and general manager of WMAL-AM, reprimanded right-wing talk show host Michael Graham for inflammatory remarks about Islam. On July 25, Berry suspended Graham, and on Aug. 22, he fired him.

“Some of Michael’s statements about Islam went over the line — and this isn’t the first time he has been reprimanded for insensitive language and comments,” said Berry. “I asked Michael for an on-air acknowledgment that some of his remarks were overly broad and inexplicably he refused.”

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islam Relations, said, “Although we are saddened that Michael Graham would not take responsibility for his hate-filled words, we do welcome WMAL’s action as a step toward removing some of the harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric that fill our nation’s airwaves.”

ASHLAND, Ala.: Poultry workers fight Tyson Jim Crow

A dozen African American workers filed suit Aug. 11 in federal court, charging giant multinational food corporation Tyson with racism.

Workers said that in July 2003, Tyson renovated a bathroom that remained locked, with only a white supervisor and several white employees having keys. Soon a “whites only” sign went up.

“When I was young, my mother used to tell me stories about segregated bathrooms,” said Henry Adams, one of the suing workers. “I never thought her reality of 71 years ago would become my reality today.”

In their suit, the workers wrote that when they complained to their supervisor in August 2003, “the plant manager pounded the table and angrily stated that the workers were ‘nasty,’ ‘dirty’ and behaved like children and stated that the bathroom had been locked for those reasons. The plant manager continued that if the bathroom was not kept clean, it would be torn down and workers would have to soil themselves.”

Plant workers said the only thing nasty and dirty in the plant is the racism and harassment. Tyson, which is nonunion, owns 300 plants around the world, including 12 in Alabama.

SAN FRANCISCO: Children of same-sex couples win equal rights

“The California Supreme Court made legal history Aug. 22 by holding in three separate decisions that children born to same-sex couples must be treated equally to other children and thus have a legally protected relationship to both partners,” said Courtney Joslin, senior staff attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “These decisions are a tremendous victory for children, for parental responsibility and for common sense.”

In all three cases, relationships ended. The decisions mean that both parents continue to be responsible for the children, just as in heterosexual marriage.

HARTFORD, Conn.: State sues feds over unfunded mandate

In the first state challenge to the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, Connecticut sued the federal government Aug. 22, charging the state is being illegally required to spend its own money to carry out NCLB’s requirements.

“No matter how good its goals, and I agree with NCBL’s goals, the federal government is not above the law,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

State education officials estimate that complying with NCLB will cost Connecticut an additional $50 million because the state received inadequate federal dollars to implement the federal law. Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell supports the suit.

The Connecticut suit charges that the U.S. Department of Education’s insistence on the standardized tests is “unsupported by significant scientific research and is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law.”

PITTSBURGH: Police use dogs and tasers on peace marchers

A picture is worth 1,000 words, especially if the pictures on television are of police using a taser on a woman already on the ground, subdued by two cops. Or of a 67-year-old woman being bitten by a police dog. The police arrested four marchers.

The Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG), an antiwar organization, marched on a military recruitment station in the Oakland community Aug. 20, protesting the “poverty draft.” Police said they reacted when marcher Edris Robinson bumped a TV camera held by Thomas Sypula, freelancer for a local station.

At an Aug. 22 meeting attended by members of the Pittsburgh Civilian Police Review Board as well as marchers, POG demanded an independent investigation of police brutality. “To respond to messages of peace with outright violence is outrageous,” said James Kleissler, executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, an umbrella progressive center, who hosted the meeting.

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696 @ aol.com).

Politics trumps teachers on science materials

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:35:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — When Philadelphia teachers return on the first day of school, they will be surprised. The new science curriculum some had tested in their classrooms using kits from Science and Technology for Children (STC) or Full Option Science Systems (FOSS) has been replaced with materials from K12 Inc.

K12’s board of directors is chaired by William J. (Bill) Bennett, U.S. secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, while its senior vice president is Charles Zogby, chief planner for the state takeover of the city’s schools in 2002 and former Pennsylvania secretary of education.

Philadelphia’s schools are managed by a five-member School Reform Commission. Three members were appointed by former Republican Gov. Mark Schweiker and two by Democratic Mayor John Street. The commission approved a $3 million contract with K12 Inc. without asking if K12 Inc. had met the commission’s criteria for the new science program.

Philadelphia now becomes the country’s first school district to adopt K12 Inc. materials districtwide. The company formerly supplied only homeschoolers and “virtual cyber charter schools.”

In 2003 and 2004 a panel of top district science teachers and administrators developed a new science curriculum and examined a vast selection of materials that might fit the “hands on” science lessons for each grade level. The panel decided on materials from STC and FOSS, considered high quality by a peer-review process funded by the National Science Foundation.

When David L. Smith, director of professional development at the DaVinci Discovery Center, reviewed K12 Inc. materials, he found shallow factual content and numerous errors of fact.

“The choice of K12 Inc. materials rather than STC or FOSS came as a shock to the science curriculum leaders,” said panel member Donna Cleland. No one on the panel remembers even reviewing K12 Inc. materials. Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Cecilia Cannon said she decided on K12 Inc. because of its technology base and a saving of $700,000 to the school district over the other recommended materials.

While some parents ask, “Is cheaper better?” teachers question if their classrooms are equipped to use the K12 Inc. materials, which depend on computers, projectors and Smartboards.

K12 Inc. has received strong criticism for using federal funds to service private and religious homeschoolers, and for its anti-scientific approach to evolution and its aggressive, high-priced lobbyists. Said Bennett, “We’re centered in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We do not ignore faith and religion and we do not ignore the arguments against evolution.”

Though he denied that his friendship with Bennett was a factor in K12 Inc. getting the contract, School District CEO Paul Vallas argued that K12 would use its political connections to help lobby the state and federal governments for more resources for the city’s schools.

In 2007-2008 the No Child Left Behind law will require states to assess their students in science achievement as they now test reading and math. This year 45 percent of Philadelphia students in grades 2-6 scored in the bottom quartile in science on a national standardized test. Their improvement will depend on the quality of the new science curriculum.

phillyrose1 @ earthlink.net

Reminder to Robertson: Thou shall not kill

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:18:00 +0000

The criminal and dangerous statements made by far right “Christian” leader Pat Robertson on his Aug. 22 “700 Club” television show, calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, should be swiftly condemned by the White House and Congress.

Administration officials say this is just the statement of a “private citizen.” Who is this “private citizen”? He is the founder of the Christian Coalition, and controls a vast media empire. He is a major force in the Republican Party and extremely close to the Bush administration. In fact, Robertson helped Bush into office, mobilizing vast sections of the evangelical Christian community to vote for Bush. Maybe this explains why the president seems too timid to actually condemn Robertson.

The leader of the 45-million-member National Council of Churches, the Rev. Bob Edgar, said Robertson’s call for murder is “appalling.” Edgar condemned the televangelist for dismissing “thousands of years of Judeo-Christian law, including the commandment that we are not to kill.”

Apparently Robertson thought he could find a loophole in the Ten Commandments!

Robertson issued his call shortly after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld returned from a trip to South America. Rumsfeld pushed governments in the region to reject the democratic and leftward aspirations of the people and to isolate Venezuela (along with Cuba). Robertson’s statement could be a trial balloon to see how Americans would react to the idea of a new U.S.-backed intervention or assassination in the region.

Robertson called for an act of terrorism — the assassination of a democratically elected head of state. It’s particularly inflammatory since his friends in this administration are currently shielding terrorist mastermind Luis Posada Carriles from extradition to Venezuela, where he faces trial for the bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner that killed 76 people.

The FCC should be forced to investigate Robertson and his 700 Club. Criminal acts — like issuing death threats — have no business on public airwaves.

Ohioans in revolt against GOP sleaze

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:10:00 +0000

Half a million people in Ohio are so fed up with government corruption that they signed petitions to place four measures on the ballot in November aimed at curbing Republican one-party rule, which they blame for the pervasive sleaze.

Keary McCarthy, spokesman for Reform Ohio Now, told the World, “We submitted our petitions to the office of the secretary of state Aug. 9. The requirement to gain ballot status was 332,000 signatures. We submitted 521,000 signatures.”

Asked if voters were influenced by the multiple scandals that have engulfed Ohio’s Republican Gov. Bob Taft, McCarthy replied, “The corruption is on the front page of the newspapers across Ohio every day. It raises people’s awareness that we have a problem of money and politics. When one party dominates government for so long, you have no checks and balances.”

Taft, heir to a family name synonymous with Republican domination of Ohio, pleaded “no contest” Aug. 18 to charges that he failed to report 50 golf outings, dinners and other gifts from corporate lobbyists in violation of Ohio law. Taft paid a slap-on-the-wrist $4,000 fine and vowed to stay in office.

A much larger scandal has been dubbed “Coingate,” stemming from Taft’s decision to invest $50 million in state workers’ compensation funds with his close friend and crony, rare-coin entrepreneur Thomas Noe of Toledo. Noe was then in charge of part of the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Fund (OWCF). Noe now admits that $13 million of those funds is missing. Also missing are two rare coins, each worth $300,000, and another batch of 119 coins worth $93,000, all property of the state of Ohio.

Noe was chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign in northwest Ohio. He personally raised the $100,000 required to be designated a “Bush Pioneer.” He and his wife had a private audience with Bush to receive the president’s thanks for Noe’s role in swinging Ohio with its 19 electoral votes to Bush in the Nov. 2 election. With Noe now under criminal investigation, the Bush-Cheney campaign returned $4,000 in personal contributions — but not the $100,000.

The story of the lost, or stolen, coins was first broken by The Toledo Blade. Since then, a Blade series has exposed the loss of $215 million by the OWCF.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) blasted Taft for allowing a fund intended to benefit injured workers to be looted. “Shame on the governor of Ohio! Shame on the state officials of the state of Ohio!” she thundered in a June 7 speech on the House floor. “What a tragedy they have perpetrated on the people of our state!”

Currently Republicans control the governor’s office and hold majorities in both houses of the Legislature. They dominate the judicial branch as well.

GOP control is so complete it is impossible to find a body with credibility to investigate the scandals. “It creates an inherent problem of the fox guarding the henhouse,” McCarthy said.

The Blade revealed July 29 that U.S. Attorney Gregory White, a former Bush campaign county chair, asked Taft to intercede with the White House to secure his appointment to head a multiagency task force investigating Noe and Coingate. Taft readily obliged. It is seen as more proof of a cover-up designed to produce a whitewash of the scandal even as it laps closer to Bush.

One of the four ballot initiatives would create a Redistricting Commission, preventing politicians from drawing district lines to ensure continued one-party dominance. It would require open procedures with citizen input to create competitive legislative and congressional districts.

Another would establish an independent State Elections Board, removing partisan politicians from control of Ohio’s voting procedures. The measure would also allow voters to vote by mail. During the 2004 election, voters in districts considered pro-John Kerry were forced to wait at the polls as long as 13 hours in driving rain while affluent Republican districts enjoyed plentiful voting machines to insure instant voting.

A third measure reduces to $2,000 the limit on contributions to statewide office and $1,000 for legislative candidates. It would ban corporate contributions and require full disclosure of contributions.

Currently, voting in Ohio is controlled by Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who also served as chairman of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, a brazen conflict of interest. Reform Ohio Now and Ohio Common Cause have launched an e-mail and letter-writing campaign to Blackwell, demanding that he put the four initiatives on this November’s ballot. (For details, visit www.reformohionow.org.)

Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman called on Taft to resign. “At this critical time for Ohio, we cannot afford one more day in which the governor is preoccupied with these scandals at the expense of a focus on creating jobs, reforming education and moving Ohio forward,” Coleman said.

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Stickup at the gas pumps

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:04:00 +0000

Stickup at the gas pump

CHICAGO — Drivers here went into sticker shock as gasoline prices jumped 40 cents over the past week. A gallon of gas in Chicago averaged $2.82 on Aug. 23, up nearly a dollar from a year ago, according to . Around the nation, the average price at the pump hit $2.59 — a 39 percent increase from last year’s $1.87.

As he filled up his van in Rogers Park on Chicago’s north side, local resident Walter Welch said he’s staying home more because of the skyrocketing prices. “It’s a lot more than I want to pay for,” he said, so “I don’t go out as much.”

But staying home won’t help Welch and other Americans this winter, when home heating prices will also skyrocket, said former California public utilities commissioner Carl Wood. “It’s going to be awful this winter,” he told the World in a phone interview.

The reason for the surging prices, Wood and others say, lies in a combination of rising world demand for oil and Enron-style manipulation by oil companies and speculators to maximize profits.

In a March 2004 report Public Citizen charged that as a result of recent mergers, five giant oil companies operating in the U.S. — ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell — dominate oil and gas production, refining and distribution. They use this dominance to stifle competition and push prices up. ExxonMobil’s second quarter net earnings topped $7.5 billion, a 32 percent increase and the highest ever for the corporation. ConocoPhillips netted $3.1 billion in the same period, a 51 percent jump. The others are similarly awash in cash.

Oil price spikes “have nothing to do with actual events,” domestic or international, Tyson Slocum, research director for Public Citizen’s energy program, told the World. “It’s about how much the oil companies want to make.”

Public Citizen’s report, “Mergers, Manipulation and Mirages: How Oil Companies Keep Gasoline Prices High, and Why the Energy Bill Doesn’t Help,” said the five corporations now control about half of domestic oil production and refinery capacity and close to two-thirds of the retail gasoline market. (Worldwide, they control 14.2 percent of oil production.)

Slocum and Wood emphasized the oil giants’ monopolistic control over refineries, enabling them to drive prices up by limiting refinery capacity. “It’s similar to the California energy crisis,” said Wood, referring to Enron’s profit scams there. “If you limit capacity, it makes it easier to manipulate prices.”

Slocum said he believes this is the biggest source of the price spikes. U.S. refineries’ profit margins have risen 80 percent in the past six years, he noted. The Public Citizen report cites a 2001 Federal Trade Commission finding that oil companies had intentionally withheld supplies from the market “because selling extra supply would have pushed down prices and thereby reduced the profitability.” The strategy, the corporate-friendly FTC admitted, was to “maximize their profits.”

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says “it wouldn’t surprise me” if oil companies are “playing games,” using refinery maintenance problems or other factors to “very consciously” withhold gasoline. In addition, Wood notes, the oil giants use their control over gas stations to curb price competition. “Ultimately, the big companies call the shots,” he says.

But Baker and Wood say we also have to come to grips with the contradiction between the growing world demand for oil and real limits to the supply.

We’re not finding oil at rates equal to the global demand for oil, Baker said.

“Oil is a diminishing resource, and natural gas has peaked and will only be declining,” said Wood. Meanwhile “we are living in a world in which other people would like to have the living standards we have” — or aspire to — in the U.S.

The U.S. sucks up a disproportionate amount of the world’s energy resources. Developing countries like China, India and Korea that are rapidly industrializing mean “more people for the same pot of oil.” These realities help drive up the price of crude oil, Wood says.

That price is currently over $66 a barrel, up 43 percent from a year ago. Wood said oil-producing countries have legitimate national interests in sometimes restricting production and keeping prices up. Currently, Baker said, OPEC countries are producing at maximum level. In any case, said Slocum, crude oil prices are really set by Wall Street speculators and oil companies.

But crude oil only accounts for part of what we pay at the pump — $66 a barrel (40 gallons) for crude is about $1.60 a gallon. The difference comes from monopoly-controlled refining and distribution.

Solutions, these experts say, lie, at a minimum, in strong federal and state action to regulate oil companies and curb excess profits, mandate energy conservation and develop alternative sources.

“Just about every secretary of state since Truman came out of the oil industry, and now we have a president and vice president” from big oil, Wood said. The oil industry contributes megamillions to politicians, most to Republicans, and spends additional millions on lobbying.

Slocum called the Bush energy bill just passed by Congress “political payback” for these campaign contributors.

We need to “throw the bums out,” he said, and elect a Congress not beholden to the oil industry.

suewebb @ pww.org